





^9. 















.% 































<> ''T;.* .<o 
















•*^^<- 



.-«• 









i» -^-^^ 










; « . 







^-./ 
• .^'\ 
















JP-'*. V 




^*'\/-J 














*-./ 






•t.** 












jP''*, 



*6' 






■'/^^-d />y^^- /i^-,\j^^ 



R£]?I ARK8 



DR. C MANNING'S 



" SLAVERY." 



BY A CITIZEN OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



L 






CHARLESTON: 
RE-PRINTKD BY A. K. MILLER, 

V- ^i No. 4 Broad-slreet. 



t 



i\ s 'si 



SLAVERY. 



CHAPTER I. 



The Reverend Dr. Channing has recently been designated in 
the London Quarterly Review as one of the only " two living 
classics" in the United States ; and our own North American, in 
anticipation or in echo of its European contemporary, has repeat- 
ed this title of respect. 

This is but the exaggerated expression of that proud rank which 
he unquestionably holds in the opinion of the literary world. A 
philosopher, a scholar, a causist, — at the head of the Unitarian 
Clergy, and connected by numberless associations with the litera- 
ture, the opinions, and the character of his countrymen, — he can 
write nothing that will not carry with it a portion of his own per- 
sonal fame ; he can maintain no doctrine that will not derive force 
from the authority of his reputation ; he can advance no opinion 
on the controverted questions of the day, which will not be re 
ceived, at home and abroad, as the general sentiment of the com- 
munity, — or if at first it should be taken for one of those novelties 
that sometimes startle us by their boldness, it is yet known to fall 
in the teeming soil of popular admiration, from whence it springs 
again with exuberant fecundity. 

The book which he has recently published, on the exciting 
subject of Slavery, is the popular wonder of the day. Written 
with a fervor which bears the evidence of sincerity, with a glow 
of benevolence that captivates the affections, and a spirit of piety 
as earnest — though it may be as mistaken — as the zeal of the cru- 
saders, it is still made more captivating by " the elegance, cor- 
rectness, purity, power, and point, in the use of language," which 
are the characteristics of his animated style. With these means 
of a powei-ful influence, it is sent forth to operate on one of the 
most momentous concerns which can ever agitate a Chiistian and 
a repubhcati people. 



Frnm any praise which may he hestowed on this book as a 
work of art, I have no disposition to detract. Moteriam supera- 
bit opus. With no desire, certainly, to place any thing of mine 
in contrast with the polished periods of the Americaji Addison, I 
trust it may not be deemed presumptuous, in this day of free 
discussion and liberal inquiry, fearlessly to examine the scope 
and tendency of his production, and submit my own reflections to 
an intelligent and candid community. 

I feel the more at liberty to do this, because the professed in- 
tention of the Reverend Gentleman is to teach me and other of 
my fellow-citizens our duty in relation to a subject of great prac- 
tical and national importance, on which we have a duty to per- 
form that we cannot evade, and to enforce his teachings by the 
authority of moral law and Christian precept, to whose suprema- 
cy we implicitly submit. Holding as high as he does the sanc- 
tions to which he appeals, but totally dissenting from his applica- 
tion of them, I am not willing that a departure from his directions 
and a denial of his precepts, should be deemed a breach of 
Christian duty or of moral obligation. I \\ill not quarrel with the 
cathedral spirit in which his commands are conveyed, although it 
may seem a little too professional, because I may myself need an 
apology for a professional manner which it is very difficult to 
shake off. It will not, however, escape observation that an accu- 
sation of grievous sins and the assumption of superior sanctity 
are apt to be deemed departures from that temper of humility, 
which, as much as any thing, is the doctrine of Christian philo- 
sophy. 

I present the following propositions, to which I shall ask the 
attention of the reader. 

First. Public senriinent in the free States, in relation to Slave- 
ry, is perfectly sound, and ougb.t not to be altered. 

Second. Public sentiment in the Slave-holding States, wheth- 
er right or not, cannot be altered. 

Third. An attempt to produce any alteration in the public 
sentiment of the country, will cause great additional evil — moral, 
social, and political. 

The docti-ine of the Northern States is : 

1 That Domestic Slavery is a deep and dreadful evil. 

2. That its continuance or removal is solely within the power 
of the 4^mestic leg.islatioii of the State in which it exists. 



3. That it is a breach of our highest political contract, and a 
violation of good faith and common honesty, to disturb the inter- 
nal condition and domestic arrangements of the Slave-holding 
States. 

The first of these positions has been so long acknowledged 
and so recently repeated, that it needs no additional enforcement, 
and he who attempts to stir up the public mind to a stronger fee- 
ling or a deeper glow of indignation, does in effect join that little 
band of fanatics whose imprudent agitation has deranged the 
peace of the community. 

Whatever may be the disclaimer of our author, his book does 
this, and in the sensitive region of slavery will be keenly felt to 
have done this ; and all the troubles caused by the inferior agents 
in this work of commotion, will be reproduced and augmented 
under the influence of his authority. 

What possible benefit is to be gained by repeating, in every in- 
flection of taste and style, and with all the gorgeousness of rheto- 
ric, long established truisms which nobody denies] Why are we 
told that, by the moral law, there can be no property in a human 
being, when, for more than half a century, the soil of New-Eng- 
land has not been pressed by the foot of a domestic slave 1 Why 
are we told that man, every man, however obscure his condition, 
is a rational, moral, immortal being, when the doctrine, familiar 
from childhood, is the daily and constant sentiment of our Chris- 
tian community ? Why are we told, in detail, of the vast evils 
of Slavery ? of the moral and social and personal degradation 
that it brings with it I of the sin and misery and wretchedness ir. 
which, with retributive justice, it involves all classes of the com- 
munity in which it is to be found ? This, and more than this, is 
the common feeling of our New-England population. As ad- 
dressed to us, this glowing and exciting language is useless for 
conviction, and powerful only for excitement to useless anger or 
unjustifiable action. 

As addressed to the South, it is but a reiteration of the deep 
and powerful feeling which, to a very great extent, prevails among 
its best informed and well principled people. But, to them, it 
comes with all the bitter insult of intentional mockery. 

Suppose vSlavery is the deep and dreadful evil which is repre- 
sented. Suppose the impassioned eloquence of a virtuous indig- 



nation gathers the whole world in one simultaneous outcry of re- 
probation and disgust. There it is — there it remains. There, in 
spite of all this outcry, still rests and will rest, this entailed curse 
of their country. 

Suppose the pretended masters of more than two millions of 
human beings, warned by Dr. Channing's denunciations, as by 
another earthquake, awaking out of their deep sleep of sin, come 
running to this modeni Paul, with the heart-breaking exclama- 
tion — Sir, sir, wliat shall we do to be saved 7 Has our apostle of 
freedom one word of consolation or instruction to give them? 
Has he devised the way of their escape from the moral guilt in 
which he tells them' they are plunged ] Does he propose any 
remedy for this leprosy of their souls '] Is there any pool of Si- 
loam in which, by his direction, they may wash and be clean 1 

None is known — nothing is proposed. No human security has 
been or can be suggested, that has the slightest practical efficien- 
cy. The Catholic priest, when he brings his penitent to the con- 
fessional, has'some relief for his conscience; but here all is deso- 
lation and despair. 

A practical philosopher would not think this mode of discussion 
calculated to- wake the conscience. Its tendency is to rouse the 
passions and a*-m the supposed criminal for defence. 

If there is no known remedy, why taunt a man with his condi- 
tion ? His condition may be a misfortune ; but it ceases to be 
his crime. Evils enough there ai'e, inseparable from domestic 
Slavery, without adding to them the irritation and anger of a 
whole people. Present pain, apprehension of future danger, un- 
certain, indefinite, but on that account more alarming, press eve- 
rywhere on the free population of a slave country. They live, 
and they know they live on the crater of a volcano, which eveiy 
moment may pour forth its concealed but certain fires, in a tor- 
rent of indiscriminate destruction. 

The duty of Christianity, it seems to me, is not to excite strong 
abhorrence in one portion of the community, which may lead 
them to break the bounds of moderation and prudence, nor to ex- 
cite in another angry and hateful feelings, and stir up their re- 
sentment and revenge. Sympathy is due to the white man as 
well as the slave. Affectionate and generous assurance of regard, 
kindness, protection, are due to the white woman of education 



and virtue, to innocence and beauty, to the feebleness of infancy 
and the helplessness of age, to the mothers, sisters, wives and 
daughters of our own race, as well as to the tawny-colored chil- 
dren of bondage. 

I object to the severe and indiscriminate national reflections, 
which this teacher of morals deems himself at liberty to throw on 
our slave-holding countrymen. True or false, they are alike ob- 
jectionable. 

"Malicious slander," says an approved wi-iter, " is the relating 
of truth or falsehood, for the purpose of creating misery." Such 
purpose would undoubtedly be denied by our author; but if mise- 
ry is not the consequence, it will not be for want of poison in the 
shaft, but vigor in the bow. 

If domestic Slavery, as the book avers, nourishes in the master 
of slaves the passion for power and its kindred vices, annihilates 
the control of Christianity, and is necessarily fatal to the purity of 
a people, — if a slave country reeks with licentiousness and crime 
— if it is tainted with a deadlier pestilence than the plague — it is 
unfortunate for our own moral habits that the facts were not known 
to our fathers, before they bound our virtuous New-England in a 
bond of amity and fellowship to all this iniquity and wretchedness. 
But it may be inquired with anxiety when this discovery was made, 
and why are 

All their faults observed, 
Set in a note book, conn'd by rote 
To cast into their teeth — 

Are we to continue united to all this moral putrefaction notwith- 
standing its ofFensiveness, or shall we cut the cords that bind us, 
and part in disgust 1 

A practical moralist is bound to find a remedy for the evils he 
enumerates, or keep silence till he can. "We are perhaps to re- 
form them, beginning the glorious work in the spirit of the Jewish 
Pharisee by thanking God we are not as other men are, extortion- 
ers, unjust, adulterers, or even as these publicans. 

Until this refoi-mation is accomplished we must go on together 
with all these accompaniments of viciousness and crime. But the 
slave country is to be a slave country for the present generation. 
"What frantic abolitionist dreams of earlier universal freedom ? 



8 

Prayer meetings may be held by the faithful. Women, and 
men like women may meet in secret conclave and preach about it. 
Little children may lose their gingerbread and give their cents to 
purchase tracts. Foreign renegadoes, whom fanaticism sends to 
us and folly encourages, may agitate the community with inflama- 
tory exhortations and specious discourse. The gifted and fair, 
whom the misplaced hospitality of an abused people flatters into a 
brief notoriety, may join their factitious consequence to the throng, 
and even the splendor of great talents, the reputation of great piety 
and the influence of a great name may bring all the resources it 
possesses to remove Slavery from the land, but the day of delive- 
rance will not dawn upon us till all who now hold slaves, and all 
who reproach them for it, and the slaves themselves who are the 
present living objects of pity and piety and sympathy and love, 
shall be together alike the "unsubstantial images of air." 

In my judgment the time will be protracted by these general 
accusations. The effect of them is to produce obduracy in error 
and resentment for indignity ; to sustain a man in his vices by all 
motives of self-respect, and rouse his hatred to the officious intru- 
der who dares, with words of charity on his lips, to violate the 
rights of persbnal responsibility and assume the offices of inquisi- 
tor and judge. But general accusations are never true. It is in 
vain to make nice distinctions which are appreciated only by scho- 
lars. The national character, real or imputed, is felt to attach to 
every individual whether he himself be or be not a partaker of the 
national vice. Yet as many men in the worst districts of a civi- 
lized community are free from the iniquity which is ascribed to 
the whole, general accusation becomeg personal injustice, and in- 
justice in the guise of morality unites upon itself all the odium 
which the world vents upon arrogance and hypocrisy. 

Beside the extreme offensiveness of national reflections, there is 
a passage of such point and particularity that scarcely a husband 
or father in the slave country can fail to consider it a personal af- 
front. 

" Early licentiousness is fruitful of crime in mature life. How far the obli 
gation to conjugal fidelity, the sacredness of domestic ties, will be revered amid 
such habits, such temptations, such facilities to vice, as are involved in slavery, 
needs no exposition. So terrible is the comiexion of crimes! They, who in- 
vade tlie domestic rights of others, suffer in their own homes. The household 



of the slave may be broken up arbitrarily by the master; but he finds his re- 
venge, if revenge he asks, in the blight which the muster's unfaithfulness sheds 
ovdr his own domestic joys. \ slave-country reeks with licentiousness. It is 
tainted with a deadlier pestilence than the plague." 

It is among the most fruitful and pathetic subjects of Dr. C's. 
complaint that there is nothing sacred in the home of the slaves ; 
that the mister enters it with impunity and dissolves those ties of 
conjugal fidelity bywhich the dearest relations of life are main- 
tained. If it be so, it is a grievous offence, and sori'ow and shame 
be on the nefarious agent in that scene of depravity. 

But it would seem that the negro's hut is not the only one that 
may be exposed to the licentiousness not indeed of lust but of 
slander. 

In the passage above quoted the charge is so general that no 
one may consider himself exempted. It is not made against the 
obscure, the low, the ignorant, the vulgar. It attaches to whatever 
in that country is deemed to be noble, elegant, refined, dignified 
or accomplished. It is the slave's master — the planter's family — 
the home of the opulent — the educated, the distinguished ; the 
bed of the chivalrous, the high-minded, the eminent in the council 
or the field that is said to be desecrated by unfaithfulness. Their 
wives and daughters by their own imjJurity satiate the slave's re- 
venge for the ignominy which in the common course of events 
taints his domestic joys ! ! 

A writer, so proverbially accurate as our author, can claim n6 
indulgence for the ardor of composition. Thus the passage reads 
without discrimination, or exception for age, rank, station, or sex. 
It is not necessary to multiply extracts, to impress on the reader 
the force of the remark, that such statements, addressed to our 
own people, are calculated to produce an excitement more ex- 
travagant and uncontrolable than has yet appeared; and, addressed 
to the slave-holders, have the inevitable tendency to call up an 
angry state of mind, wholly inimical to any useful results. On 
their part, they will complain, not of injury, but of insult. They 
will not be satisfied with the limitations here and there interspers- 
ed, in the course of our author's remarks, because the evils of 
Slavery, as he describes them, are treated as inseparable from its 
existence, and attach, in a great degree, to all slave-holders. The 
sin is on them all. The wrong, the injustice, the oppression is 
2 



10 

practised by all ; and the retaliation and revenge, " by the terrible 
connexion of crimes," falls upon all. The indignation, which it 
called up in the North by this mode of discussion, is and must be 
directed to all. We know the fiery character of the slave-holders. 
I)r. C. describes it strongly : 

"A quick resentment of whatever is thought to encroach on personal dignity 
—vehemence of the vindictive passions— and contempt of all laws, human and 
divnie, in retaliating injury ; these take rank among the virtues of man, who.-e 
aelf-estimation has been fed by the possession of absolute power." 

With such vieNvs of their temperament, it is surj?rising he should 
deem his mode of attack calculated to accomplish the professed 
object of his book. It is pouring oil on a conflagration. 



CHAPTER II. 



The continuance or removal of Slavery is solely within the 
power of the domestic legislation of the States in which it exists. 

On this point, I do not find that our author differs from the 
common sentiment of his fellow-citizens ; though, indeed I could 
have wished to see the political duty of the Northern States a 
little more distinctly aflirmed. He does, however, declare that 
the question, "how Slavery shall be removed, is a question for 
the slave-holder, and one which he alone can fully answer ;" and 
that, " we have no right of interference, nor do we desire it." 

Upon this, I remark that there is in the book a singular discre* 
pancy between the means and the end, and a direct assumption of 
the right which is disclaimed. 

The means proposed are moral influences. To have any effect, 
they must find their way into the mind and heart of the slave-hold- 
er. The end, which we call Abolition, the slave-holders consider 
a request to give up, waste, annihilate, what they estimate to be 
worth to them about five hundred millions of dollars. 

The moral influence, which is to work this stupendous miracle 
in their hearts, is first to commence by persuading them that they 



11 

are guilty of atrocious crime ; then it is to make them penitent for 
their deep transgressions, — and, as penitence is nothing without 
reformation, they are to be induced to part with this accumulation 
of ill-gotten wealth, and surrender it at the instigation of an au- 
thorized minister of the gospel of peace ! ! 

Surely, the first step in this gigantic enterprise, should be to 
conciliate the confidence and esteem of the patients, upon whom 
it is to be essayed. A prudent and skilful necromancer, before 
he could expect to charm them out of their fortunes, would en- 
deavor to win his way to their hearts. Peter the hermit, when he 
preached a cnisade, dealt outhis promises as liberally as his threats, 
and assured his devoted hearers that, although they might die in 
Palestine, they should wake in Heaven. Some politic priests, 
who have the credit, in modem times, of being extremely suc- 
cessful in obtaining property for pious uses, have opened the strong 
box with the key of love, — or, if the terrors of the confessional 
have induced some miserable penitent to plate sin with gold, it 
was when the extravagance of his fears had swallowed up his 
judgment. 

The attempt, in the present case, is greater than was ever con- 
ceived by the Vatican, and one which, in no age of the church, 
would have been made as a requisition of authority. 

An Unitarian Clergymen goes on a desperate enterprise, when 
he sttempts to awe men or frighten them into a compliance with 
his will He may deride, if he pleases, the arrogance of the slave- 
holder, and describe it as the consequence of power habitually 
maintained over one or two hundred dependents; but what will 
the slave-holder say, in return, of tkat temper of mind which ven- 
tures to intimidate five millions of freemen, by menace, denuncia- 
tion, and indignity. 

If, indeed, we mean to fight the slaves free, it is of no moment 
how aJigTy we make their masters ; but if we really intend to use 
moral means and the powers of persuasion, it is extremely unfor- 
tunate that we give them strong reason to believe we are not sin- 
cere. 

3. It is a breach of our highest political contract, and a viola- 
tion of o:ood faith and common honesty, to disturb the internal 
condition and domestic arrangernents of the slave-holding States. 
I assume this position to be self-evident. At any rate, I do not 
address myself to those who deny it. 



12 

The only open question is, does this book and its doctrines in- 
terfere with the internal condition and domestic arrangements of 
the slave-holding States'? 

First, I say, they are intended to do it. Slavery is established 
by law ; and the object of this publication is to abolish it. If, in 
the opinion of our author, his book will not, and cannot disturb 
the existing relations of Slavery, it was a work of gratuitous folly 
to piiblish it. 

Second. The press is the only power that can be used to dis- 
turb the domestic arrangements of Slavery. It is not imagined 
that any law in Massachusetts can operate in Carolina, or that we 
are to move with an army to put down our white fellow-citizens. 
No other interference is possible but the interference of the press ; 
and he who uses it in a manner to produce a dissolution of the re- 
lations of Slavery, does what he can and all he can to produce 
that disturbance which honor, truth, and conscience bind us not 
to excite. 

Is it said this book is not, by its manner, calculated to pro- 
duce distiubance among slaves ? Let us examine it. Think 
you, if Dr. Channing was to go into the slave country, and, 
gathering round him a hundi-ed negroes, preach the doctrines to 
them which he has published to us, it would be likely to produce 
disturbance 1 Or, what is the same thing, if he should send his 
book to some free negi'o, who should mount a stump, and read to 
his race, would it produce disturbance % Is it a book that any 
slave-owner would permit to be published on his plantation 1 Is 
the existence of the book good cause of alarm to him, and an in- 
ducement to gi-eatercare that it should not be circulated ? No- 
body can doubt upon these points. 

The only remaining inquiry is, will the doctrines of this book 
reach the ears of the slaves ? 

Whether they do or not, Dr. C. is equally culpable, by his own 
system of morals. For, by printing the book, he has done what 
he can to give it to the vvoild. 

But it will get to its destination. Sooner or later, its doctrines 
will reach the slave. The world is one great whispering-gallery, 
whose faintest echoes are reverberated by the press, i. Slowly, 
but surely, whatever it publishes moves through inferior agents 
aud reaches aJl ears deeply concetced in its relations. 



13 

Now inquire what is the doctrine which the writer advances. 
Upon this, I have a word to say to him as a logician. He does not 
follow out his own premises. He disavows the conclusions, directly, 
plainly, irresistibly, deduced from his own positions, and appears 
to me to be oppressed with the horror, which no human being 
can escape from, who looks with steadiness and constancy on the 
immense moral evil, which, in the character of a Christian moral- 
ist, his doctriiae is bringing on the country. 

I charge him — in spite of his disclaimer — with tlw doctrine of 
Insurrection, He inculcates the right of insuiTection on the 
whole slave population of the United States. It is immaterial that 
he contradicts himself It is in vain that he abjures this act in ab- 
solute terms. If the necessary and fair and only proper deduction 
from his principles is insuiTection ; if all sound reasoning from his 
declared principles leads to it ; if all rational men must so under- 
stand it ; if the stupidest slave would so receive it ; if it requires 
false logic and sophistry to escape from it ; — then, it is insurrec- 
tion that he preaches ; and for its horrors, when they come, and for 
their evils, in anticipation, he is answerable, to the extent of his 
exertion, at the tribunal of public opinion and the bar of God. 

This is a gi'ave charge ; but it is easily demonstrated. 

The whole doctrine of his book is, that man, under no possible 
circumstances, can be rightfully made a slave. On the twenty- 
ninth page, the position that has before been repeated in every 
form, and with every variety of illustration, is summed up in the 
following forcible and impressive words : 

" We have thus seen that a human being cannot rightfully be held and used 
as property. No legislation, not that of all countries or worlds, could make 
him so. Let this be laid down, as a first, fundamental truth. Let us hold it 
fast, as a most sacred, precious truth. Let us hold it fast against all customs, all 
laws, all rank, wealth, and power. Let it be armed with the whole authority of 
the civilized and Christia.n world." 

The negroes in the Southern States are made slaves by acts of 
legislation and the coercive power which is exercised under those 
acts. If these acts were repealed,. every slave would be as free as 
Dr. Channing. But if these acts of legislation are already made 
void by a power superior to all human constitutions and govern- 
meiits, if thej cannot accomplish what they propose to accomplish, 



14 

they have done nothhig — they no more operate upon the negro 
within their jurisdiction, than upon the white man beyond it. 
There is, then, no legal Slavery, and can be none. The force, 
therefore, that restrains the slave, is oppression, injustice, tyranny, 
despotism ; and if, against all this, a man may not rightfully rebel, 
if, when he is thus unjustly made a slave for life, and his wife and 
children are made slaves with him, he may not rise, in his strength 
or his madness, and shake off his chains, and stanc^ guiltless be- 
fore God, with the blood of his oppressor on his hands, it is in vain 
to talk about human rights. 

It is absurd to tell of wrongs without remedy. For every hu- 
man wrong there is a remedy; bylaw, when the law provides one, 
and by resistance, when under the color of law, instead of a reme- 
dy we find only a wrong. 

Could we doubt a moment about this, if the law of Carolina 
should joropose to detain every white traveller passing through' its 
territory, and turn him on the plantation as a slave ? In such case, 
the law would be no more invalid and unjust than Dr. C. repre- 
sents the laws about negro slaves. But is there a heart in New- 
England that would not beat high with sympathy for the abused 
white man ? Is there an arm that would not reach him a dagger, 
if it could ? Is there a tribunal on earth, or any law of Heaven, 
that would not excuse — excuse, did I say ? — that would not com- 
mand him to watch for his opportunity, and make li'unself free ? 

If a human being is made a slave under color of a law which is 
nothing but the law of force, which is against right, justice, and 
the will of God, which gives no title, and can convey no property 
in his person, which is criminal and void in its conception and its 
continuance, all moral and Christian doctrine, all sound reasoning, 
and that spirit of humanity which makes man superior to a brute, 
give him the right of resistance and tells him to use it. 

But, says Dr. C. — alarmed, unquestionably, at the dangerous 
precipice to which he was tending — "goveniment, indeed, has or- 
dained Slavery, and to government the individual is in no case to 
offer resistance." 

Such a sentiment is fit only for a slave. It is the doctrine of 
passive obedience and non-resistance whicli was scouted from all 
human creeds, with the same breath that blew away the divine 
right of kings and the dogmatical pretcniiious of the clergy. 



15 

Government is to be resisted by the sacred right of revohitionand 
the inherent and original right of rebeUion, in those extreme and 
'dreadful emergencies which cany with them their own justifica- 
tion. If government, when, without right and against moral prin- 
ciple and Christian duty, it subjects two millions of human beings 
to abject Slavery, whom God made free and intends, in his holy 
will, should continue to be free — if government may not, in such 
case, be resisted by them, all our sentiments of freedom are wrong 
— all reverence for our own revolution is folly — all respect for the 
liberty we enjoy is no more than idle pretension and senseless ex- 
travagance. 

Does our learned theologian expect to shield himself from ani- 
madversion by the use of the term "individual?" It would be a 
quibble unworthy his character. An individual citizen, in an or- 
ganized government, appeals for redress to the law. But, in the 
occurrence of such an unsupposable case as that he should be 
doomed to death or slavery, without trial or justice, his right of re- 
sistance revives, which, under common circumstances, is suspend- 
ed. It may be useless to him, but not the less perfect. 

BTit the slaves are not to be treated as a case of a single, solita 
ry individual. There are more than two millions of them, and 
nearly as many as the number of American citizens in 1776. 
There are three times the number of the Avhole population of 
Massachusetts ; and if any government, foreign or domestic, was 
to doom the free-born and gallant sons of our Commonwealth to 
Slavery, and there was one of them that should tell you that gov- 
ernment must not in such case be resisted, he would be fit for the 
Slavery to which he was destined — aye, truly, to be the slave of 
slaves. 

One cannot but be struck with the opposition between the 
course of our author and the Bible, from which he professes to 
draw his artillery, as explained by Dr. Wayland, whose most 
practical and able elements of moral science he quotes, with de- 
served approbation. 

If the Bible, says Dr. W., had forbidden the evil of Slavery in- 
stead of subverting the j^rinr/qAe, if it had proclaimed the unlaw- 
fulness of Slavery, and taught slaves to resist the oppression of 
their masters, it would instantly have airayed the two parties in 
deadly hostility throughout the civilized world. 



16 

Dr. Channing is not contented with subverting the principle. 
He assumes to forbid the sin. 

He undertakes to proclaim the unlawfulness of Slavery, and 
thereby teaches the right of resistance, and as a consequence, does 
what he can to array that deadly hostility which the wiser teach- 
ings of the gospel were intended to prevent. 

It would be astonishing that, with his intellectual acuteness, he 
should have disregarded this plain distinction between his own 
course and his inaster's, but that we know the power of enthusi- 
asm, like Slavery, "to blind its supporters to the plainest truth." 

The argument of Dr. C. is as unsound in its logic as it is refin- 
ed, extravagant and dangerous in its morality, and horrible in its 
consequences. 

His fallacy is one very common to enthusiasts. He assumes a 
proposition to be universally true which is true only with impor- 
tant qualifications and many limitations. 

His conclusion is based on the premises that no property can 
be made to exist in a human being. 

This is but partially true even in Massachusetts. We admit a 
limited property in human beings. A father has a property in 
his child ; a master in his apprentice ; a ship-captain in his marin- 
ers ; a general in his soldiei^s. Their labor belongs to him, and 
their services, like those of the slave, may be enforced even by 
stripes. 

Propeity is the creature of municipal law. It exists nowhere 
without law ; and everywhere is inherent in everything which is 
made property by law. 

It may be an unwise, impolitic and cruel law, but still it has its 
effect. 

Where is the authority for the declaration that there can be no 
property in a human being "? In the Bible? Slavery is recogni 
zed under the Mosaic and Chi'istian dispensation without censure? 
In History ] Slavery has existed in all time in the fairest regions 
of the earth and among the most civilized portions of mankind. 
Our own government not long since made a claim on Great Brit- 
ain for the value of the property of our citizens in some hundred 
human slaves. The principles was admitted by the English na- 
tion. The amount to be paid was refened to the arbitration of 
the Emperor of Russia. Our claim was allowed, the money re* 



17 

ceived, and distributed to the claimants for their loss of their pi'o- 
perty in slaves. 

We acknowledge the existence of such property whenever we 
seize and return a runaway slave on the application of his master; 
and our Supreme Court, referring to the period when Slavery was 
recognized here by law, have in numerous instances adjudicated 
important rights on the doctrine that where Slavery does exist or 
has existed by the law of the land, such law did admit and must 
be now deemed to admit the existence of property in human be- 
ings. 

If it be true now that no law can make man a slave, it was true 
always. Discovery of truth does not make truth. It was as true 
in the days of Pharaoh that the earth moved round the Sun as it 
is now, although nobody knew it. 

If we are to adjudicate to-day on a law of the last century, and 
now for the first time discover that what was taken for truth was 
not truth, we must now declare it. If no human power could 
make a slave, no human power has a right to say that any man is, 
or that any man has been a slave. But the doctrine of Dr. C. ap- 
plied to civil rights has been oveiTuled by the first statesmen and 
jurists of the country, and I venture to say never will be received 
with any favor by practical men. 

If it is not from scripture or history, legislation or jurisprudence 
that Dr. C. derives authority for his argument, whence does it 
come 1 From a refined and elaborate metaphysical subtilty whol- 
ly incomprehensible to a great part of mankind — from new light 
in the recesses of his study, from some double distillation which 
by a novel process of alchemy he has been able to etlect on the 
dry bones of ancient morality. 

But while he has thus in his own estimation converted dross into 
gold, while he comes forward as the discoverer of a new elixir of 
life for the mortal and decaying principles of mankind, while he 
proposes to effect by it an entire revolution in the manners, senti- 
ments and feelings of the civilized world, it would have been kind 
in him rather to have spoken in the style of pity than of censure, 
and instead of accusing the slave-holder of his sins and his crimes, 
have been lenient to past transgressors on the recollection of their 
ignorance. 



18 

New discoveries in moral science like the nostrums of the quack 
win their way slowly into the favor of mankind. We are apt to 
be jealous of that inventor who assumes to be wiser than past ages, 
or better than the present. We subject his experiment to a care- 
ful analysis ; we revise his process with coolness ; and when we 
detect the en-or of his theory and the danger of his practice, we 
only add another to the list of those delusions with which a man 
more easily deceives himself than the world. 

"Dr. C. takes it for granted that no reader would be so wanting 
in moral discrimination and moral feeling, as to urge that men may 
rightfully be seized and held as property because various govern- 
ments have so ordained." 

This is a departure from the question. The confonnity of hu- 
man law to the sujjposed will of God is one thing, the operation 
of actual existing law is another. Property is the result of hu- 
man legislation, and not of divine command ; and, whether men 
or beasts are or are not property, may or may not be property, can 
or cannot be used, treated, held, sold or bartered as property, is a 
question solely referable to the law of the land. 

This idea of going behind and beyond the law to find a rule for 
human action in civil society is getting to be somewhat alarming. 

One man thinks the law of maniage is a monopoly and should 
be abolished ; another thinks a distillery is an abomination in the 
eye of Heaven, and that its o\\Tier is out of the protection of all 
human law, though it includes him in its teiTns. Some men be- 
lieve that there ought to be a community of goods, by a plain in- 
dication of Providence, and some who do not care much about 
Providence, join in the denunciation of the laws. Some men think 
that the transportation of the Sunday mail is a gi-eat violation of 
holy time, and if they had their way would lay a weekly embargo 
on the post office. Some men think that the law which punishes 
a felon with death involves the whole country in the guilt of mur- 
der. Indeed there is no end to the vagaries of the human intellect. 
If we once go beyond the law to ascertain in what property or 
rights consist, we put every thing in society on the wild ocean of 
uncertainty. The law is the expression of public wisdom — when 
in public judgment it is wrong it will be changed. 

Dr. C. probably means to say that the law which makes property 
of a slave is inconsistent with the law of God. In deciding this 



Id 

question the Doctor is not to be sole judge. It is a question about 
which other men quite as eminent have the same right of opinion. 
Its true solution is to be ascertained by the condition and circum- 
stances of the case. 

As a general proposition this is declared to be false by the uni- 
versal past legislation of the world, and by no men more emphati- 
cally than by our own eminent civilians and jurists. 

If our Supreme Court could be asked the question whether Hu- 
man law could convey any right of property against the principles 
of sound morality, religion, and the will of God, I have no doubt 
they would by an unanimous opinion decide that it could not. If 
they had to adjudicate on the question whether the law of Massa- 
chusetts before the constitution of 1780, did make property of a 
slave, they would as readily decide that it did. They have done 
60 again and again. 



CHAPTER ni. 



There are those among us who are ready to exclaim — what are 
consequences to us 1 Are we not free men 1 May we not publish 
the truth 1 Have we not the right of free discussion, as one of the 
elements of public liberty ] 

I admit, in its fullest and broadest latitude, the legal right of free 
discussion ; but I insist that this, like all other human rights, is to 
be controlled by a high moral responsibility. 

While the legal right may be admitted, in its fullest and most 
perfect existence, the expediency of the exercise of such aright is 
a matter of the most gi-ave consideration. All that is legally right 
is not expedient ; and whatever is clearly and palpably inexpedi- 
ent, ceases for the time to be morally right. 

It would be a shameful abuse of political liberty to do, at all times 
and under all circumstances, everything that is not prohibited by 
public law. The commands of honor, of conscience, and of duty, 
are as strong in a republic as in a despotism. They can be safely 
relaxed no where. In the one case, they are enforced by the com- 



20 

mands of the monarch ; in the other, they are referred to the pro- 
tection of the people ; and in either case, if their dictates are vio- 
lated, there is the same necessary and unavoidable consequence — 
the demoralization of the public character. 

Under the administration of a free govei'nment there is the 
stronger obligation for personal restraint, because it is to the per- 
sonal, and not the public povi^er, that the good order of society is 
mainly entrusted. 

If the statute-book contained no law against arson, it w^ould not 
follow that a midnight incendiary might wrap his neighbor's dwel- 
ling-house in flames. But the statute, necessary as it now is, may 
be safely repealed whenever society arrives at that state of perfec- 
tion in which the moral jmnciple will be strong enough to afford 
general protection. 

If there is no law of the land that prohibits the free discussion 
of the most dangerous and exciting subjects of public inquiry — if 
the necessary freedom of popular government does not permit the 
arm of the law to stop the pen or the press, it is on the presump- 
tion — which, like other fictions of law, is sometimes strangely at 
variance with fact — that there is a moral and prudential principle, 
quite as operative and efficacious for the protection of society. It 
is on the presumption that they who have the power to move the 
mass of the community, will have the discretion to do it wisely; 
that they, whose education, talents, and* learning, "preaching to 
st,ones would make them moveable," will take care that they do not 
remove the foundation stones upon which the temple of national 
liberty is erected. 

When, therefore, we admit the perfect right of free discussion 
as uncontrolled and uncontrollable in our government of laws, we 
do it with the obvious qualification, that whatever of evil tendency 
the government does not restrain by force, individuals will restrain 
by inclination ; and that whenever there is a breach of the great 
law of general security, by inflammatory and dangerous discus- 
sions, the inefficiency of the government will be more than sup- 
plied by the reprobation of the people. 

There is a growing tendency to disregard this broad axiom, 
without which a democracy could not subsist. There is an in- 
creasing disposition to use to its extreme the liberty of the consti- 
tution, to forget that republican government is self-goveniment, 



21 

and that self-government involves on the citizen an obligation to do 
that for himself which the peace and good order of the State re- 
quires, and which, elsewhere, he is compelled to do by the irritating 
interference of public authority. 

I know very well that Dr. Channing disclaims "agitation," and 
all "indiscriminate and inflammatory vituperation of the slave- 
holder." But how much better than such vituperation are the highly- 
colored and exciting pictures of sin, ruin, disgrace, which this 
modern Angelo brings upon his canvass, in the freshness of in- 
stinctive life ? How much more excusable are his strong appeals 
to duty and pride of character, and the lofty spirit of our people, 
which ring like the war-trumpet on the field of battle, to stir up 
the passions of mankind 1 But, are they true ] Suppose they 
are. How much is this a reason for quietness and peace. How 
much is the artist, whose splendid and costly engravings were late- 
ly burned by order of a Court of Justice, excusable, because every 
delineation of his pencil was most exactly faithful to nature. Truth, 
like nature, may not always be exhibited, without the excitement 
of feelings, appetites, and passions, that a wise and practical phi- 
losopher would deem it dangerous to move. 

If a discussion of Slavery, in its actual state and condition in 
our country, excites in the people of the free States, indignation, 
resentment, and pity ; if it produces in New England hoiTor, ab- 
hoiTence, and contempt, it must lead to action, in which these 
convulsions of the mind will pour out its concentrated fires, or it 
will compel us to brood, in sullen malignity and silence, over the 
compressed passions that policy stifles in the heart. We must be 
open enemies or false and deceitful friends. If no action is pro- 
posed, and no safe action can possibly be devised for us, there is 
no alternative but sullenness and hatred. The bonds of our poli- 
tical union may remain indeed undivorced ; but we have prepared 
for ourselves a condition of connubial wretchedness, to which 
their actual dissolution would be infinitely preferable. 



22 



CHAPTER IV. 

Public sentiment in the slave-holding States cannot be altered. 
This arises from a very melancholy consideration, but one which 
it is necessary should be deeply considered. 

Domestic Slavery is, in the United States, so intimately con- 
nected with civil society, that it can never be removed but by one 
of those trernendous convulsions in which nations perish. 

I speak not merely of the destruction of popular government, of 
the overturn of one democracy and the substitution of another. I 
say nothing of the dissolution of the Union and the establishment 
of several feeble and independent States. I speak not of civil war 
and its concomitants of butchery, massacre, and blood. Far less 
do I limit the statement to the waste of property, the desolation 
and ruin, the wretchedness and poverty of houseless and helpless 
fugitives from their own comfortable homes. I speak not of the 
deluge of crime that would sweep like another flood over all the 
moral monuments of the country ; but of Chaos come again, in the 
utter annihilation of all the elements of which our social, civil, re- 
ligious and political institutions are created. 

I speak to sensible men who see this danger, and to conscien- 
tious men who tremble at it. I speak to firm men, who will not 
think it a mark of courage to brave its horrors, or of intrepidity 
to conceal them. I -speak to practical, experienced business men, 
who know, by actual contact, the force of human motives and the 
rage of human passion, and not to the theoretical and secluded 
scholar, who would give lessons in his study for the measure of a 
whirlwind. I speak to the bold and venturous navigator on the 
great ocean of life, who has heard the roar of the elements and 
felt the strain of the cordage ; and not to the little pilot of a pleasure- 
boat, who never ventures beyond the ripple of a summer's breeze. 
I utter the declaration with grief; but the pain of the writer 
does not diminish the truth of the fact. I speak it to men whose 
generous and noble spirits would shrink from no sacrifice that 
would alter the fact, whose blood would be poured out like water 
if it could wash this record from existence, but who know and feel 
that it is the record of immutable truth, over which no human pow- 
er can prevail ; and I give utterance to it now, because every effort 



23 



to remove the condition ofdomestic Slavery in the United States 
tends to produce a catastrophe, first to be written in the blood of 
purity and innocence, and then efTaced by the ashes of every thing 
valuable in the land. 

Why this should be so cannot be explained. Possibly as a ba- 
lance in the operations of Heaven, for the unparalleled blessings 
of our extensive and prosperous republic; possibly as a trial for 
those virtues, which need calamity as well as happiness ; possibly 
as the mode by which our nation, like the mouldering empires of 
the elder world, shall come to its termination ; possibly for some 
mysterious reasons, yet to be developed in the wisdom of Provi- 
dence; possibly for some cause, like the minor evils of life, never 
to be made manifest to human reason. 

We are concerned with the fact more than with its cause. 
Is It true then that Domestic Slavery is the perpetual and im- 
moveable condition of our national existence 1 

Let us examine very summarily actual facts. It is now firmly 
established in fourteen States and Temtories of the Union and in 
the District of Columbia, the centre and common property of the 
whole. This slave District is the fairest and most fertile portion 
of the United States. It is the most progi-essive in population— 
the most extensive in ten^itory, and of course most likely to advance 
m influence and political power in the government of the country. 
Without adopting in their full force all Dr. C's. disparaging re- 
flections on the character of white men within a slave district, it is 
obvious that the circumstances under which they are placed are 
not very favorable to the operation of nice speculative morality 
when it comes in opposition to direct personal interest. The po- 
pulation, already five milhons, will double and quadruple in a 
short time by force of its natural productiveness and by new emi- 
gration. The natives (bom) grow up accustomed to the state of 
things around them. The emigrants go there acquainted with 
the laws and customs of the countiy, which they prefer to those 
of the adjacent free States. They go to better their worldly af- 
fairs, and, with very insignificant exceptions, not as promulgators 
of a new faith or reformers of existing principles. Slavery is es- 
tablished by law in this vast territory and always has been from its 
first settlement by Europeans. This law does not indeed change 
Its proper character, but it is the indication of the sentiment of the 
people as to that character, and speaks the popular opinion of the 



24 

country. By force of that law a slave is property and may be 
owned, bought and sold as any other article of merchandize. His 
time and labor are his owner's, and the profits of his labor belong 
to his master. He is of course productive property. However ab- 
hoiTent all this may sound in our ears, we must hear it and give it 
weight. We are dealing now not with theories but with facts. 
Not discussing abstract rights, but actual realities ; not what ought 
to be, but what is. Slaves, then, are in fact property. They are 
the wealth and fortune of the planters. We know how intimately 
property enters into all the relations of life, especially any kind of 
property which has been long understood and possessed, and has 
the peculiarities of being fixed or moveable at the will of the own- 
er. In the division of estates property in slaves is considered a 
part of the inheritance as much as bank stock; and it may happen 
that while one heir takes the money of his ancestor, others divide 
the land and the slaves at ir estimated value. As property, 
debts are contracted on a pledge of slaves, and slaves are disposed 
of to pay the debts of their master. Here are the obvious direct 
operations of the property character of the slave population. Like 
articles of merchandize elsewhere, like leather, flour, sugar, cot- 
ton, coffee, ships, cloths, paper, or whatever is used among us for 
property, and with which the industry and enterprise of our citi- 
zens is concerned, this species of property is in the slave district 
the indirect means of a great proportion of all the activity and in- 
dustry which is there visible in the accumulation of profit. It is 
an item indeed in the aggi-egation of capital which is not here 
particularly the subject of barter, the item, namely, of disposable 
human labor. It resembles the value which is represented with 
us by the labor of oxen or horses, which we know to be, though 
immensely less in amount, yet actually of very considerable con- 
sideration in the estimate of our New England wealth. 

I have already adverted to the amount of capital vested in slaves 
by those who, differing from Dr. Channing, consider a slave as 
their property. It is of httle moment whether we take the South- 
em estimate as correct, and consider the slaves of the United 
States as equivalent in worth to five hundred millions of dollars, 
or deducting one half, estimate them at two hundred and fifty 
millions of dollars, the smaller sum is of such enormous mag- 



25 

nitude that it will answer the purposes of illustration as well as 
the largei.* 

The professed owners of this property are of every grade and 
class of society in point of wealth, integrity and reputation, from 
the affluent planter with hi s thousand negroes, to the day laborer 
who owns a single boy perhaps to diminish his mechanical drudge- 
ry ; from the statesman of high intelligence, and the clergyman 
of acknowledged probity, whose domestic establishments are serv- 
ed by their bondsmen and bondswomen, to the keeper of the 
gambling house or the bagnio, to whose deeds of infamy these 
servile subjects lend their enforced assistance. It is doubtful 
whether in the free States there is any one article of property 
which enters so extensively and minutely into all the ramifications 
of society. Our society is more divided into portions and detach 
ments, having a general connexion to be sure, but not that inti- 
mate and close union which binds the inhabitants to the common 
interests of slavery. When our woollen interest was threatened, 
the manufacturers of cotton thought they could get along pretty 
well. When our navigation interest was in danger, the commerce 
of the country most closely allied to it did not feel the apprehen- 
sion of immediate dissolution. If at this moment any one or two 
of our most productive occupations were closed by a war or a ta- 
riff that should ruin them, the rest might go on with only their pro- 
portional share in the common calamity. But Slavery wherever it 
exists is the sensorium of the country. It is the one nerve which 
runs through the whole political body, and connects every part of 
it with the seat of life. 

Now before Slavery can cease in the United States this vast pro- 
perty must be annihilated. It must be suirendered by consent of 
its owners or wrested from them by force of war. 

An overwhelming and well appointed army not less numerous 
than Napoleon led into Russia, might in process of time oveiTun 
the country, and, making desolation, call it peace. Such an army 
would give the abolitionist some reason to hope that Slavery might 
be destroyed. He might expect in the lust of conquest to find the 

* Since this was written I have seen an estimate by which the value of slaves 
in the United States is estimated to be more than eight hundred millions of 

DOLLARS 



t/ 



26 

slave aTrl his master in one common grave. Force can do any 
thing. But to expect that the Southern slave holders will volun- 
tarily relinquish their possession and title to the property which 
they claim in their slaves, is a stretch of credulity that has as yet 
no parallel in the history of human delusion. 

Of the tenacity with which mankind cling to the possession of 
property, we are not to judge by estimating its intrinsic . title to 
their regard, but by practice, experience and a knowledge of hu- 
man wants, passions and desires. He is a poor teacher who in 
estimating the operation of motives and the causes of action takes 
mankind as he would have them, and not as they are. He is a 
false guide in any expedition for the benefit of society, who takes 
the road he should prefer without first ascertaining if it be practi- 
cable. 

Two hundred and fifty millions of dollars must be sacrificed by 
about four millions of people. Let us examine this matter by 
bi-inging it home to ourselves. Taking round numbei's it would 
be equivalent to a tax of four millions five hundred thousand dol- 
lars on the City of Boston — or upwards of thirty-six millions of 
dollars for the State, and more than one hundred millions of dol- 
lars for the six New-England States. 

I have all reasonable faith in the generosity, the spirit and the 
nobleness of my fellow-citizens, but if it were asked of them to 
take this immense amount and pour it as a votive gift into the 
ocean, or gather it and bum it on their lofty hills as a beacon fire 
in honor of freedom, and to relieve the Southern slaves from their 
intolerable bondage, who ventures to believe he would live long 
enough to see the consummation of so much moral glory 1 Or 
suppose it was to be asked of us to pay only our proportionate 
share of a general assessment on the United States for the indem- 
nity of the slave holders, would the city of Boston be willing to 
contribute its amount of one million and three quarters, or the 
State its quota of seventeen millions and a half? 

If here then, where there is such an abhorrence of slavery, where 
there is so much high principle, where so many think it morally 
wrong, there would be found some difficulty in obtaining a contri- 
bution large enough to purchase ease to our own consciences, by 
relieving the country of this awful iniquity, what may be expected 
in the slave districts, where there is no such feelinsr, and of whose 



27 

freemen we ask not to contribute mei-ely, but to take upon them- 
selves the whole load — to reduce themselves to want — their fami- 
lies to beggary, and their country to ruin. 

But the loss of the slave as property, immense as it is, forms a 
small part of the injury which the Abolitionist proposes, as that 
injury is estimated at the South. 

It is the prevalent opinion there that a great part of the land is 
susceptible only of slave cultivation, and that without this kind of 
labor their fine fields would be desolate. What the fact may be I 
am unable to say — perhaps it may be true only to a limited extent. 
It is the opinion and not the fact which the Abolitionist must en- 
counter before he can persuade the planter to give freedom to his 
bondsman, but he must satisfy the Northern people not of the 
opinion but of the fact, and assure them that their cotton, sugar, 
rice and tobacco will come to them as it now does, or he njay find 
some littlejesistance here to his glorious scheme of universal lib- 
erty. It will be a poor argument, in the way of traffic, to persuade 
the Northern freemen to contribute their millions to redeem the 
country from the sin of slavery, to tell them that the property they 
have preserved will not command the accustomed conveniences of 
life. Whether this labor could be done by freemen, and would, 
if there were no slaves, be done to any considerable extent by 
freemen, is a problem we may never be called upon practically to 
settle, nor is it of moment that we should. There are some con- 
ditions in life that no state or circumstance can make more deplo- 
rable, if it does not cause actual corporeal pain ; and a man, whose 
lot it may be to work in a rice swamp, or toil in a cotton field, to 
whom nothing but that unvarying drudgery is appointed by Provi- 
dence, without hope or possibility of change, may thank Heaven 
that in its mercy it ordained him not to be free. 

These are some of the difiiculties in the way of abolition and by 
what motives are they to be overcome ? Dr. Channing proposes 
to melt the iron chain of the slave by the soft bi-eath of peace ; he 
expects to dissolve his fetters by the charm of words. 

He tells the slave owner that he cannot have property in a hu 
man being — that to hold him as property is "to inflict a great 
wrong, to incur the guilt of oppression;" "that man has received 
sacred, unalienable rights, which are violated by slavery." That 
slavery is a mighty evil, and he proceeds to argue out these "poii- 
tions with all the learning of the schools. 



28 

Tf he spoke with the voice of an Archangel and carried convic- 
tion to every planter in the whole region of slavery, it is hard to 
believe that such conviction would have any effect. Human na- 
ture must be improved and subHmated vastly beyond its present 
standard before such arguments on such a subject would have any 
practical effect. But the whole of this reasoning will fall on deaf 
ears and marble hearts. It will not be credited for a moment. 
Education, custom, habits, all the forms of society, all >the modes 
and manners of life combine to raise an atmosphere that will not 
transmit the sound. The law of the land refutes it. The teach- 
ings of the reverend, the learned, the eminent among them con- 
found it. The immortal leader of the armies of freedom was a 
slave holder. The draftsman of the Declaration of Independence 
was a slave holder. The eminent patriot to whom more than to 
any living man we owe the constitution of the United States was a 
slave holder, and their example will in the land of their nativity 
outweigh all the elocjuonce and all the learning of a whole colony 
of mere talking clergymen. 

The slave region has pronounced its decision. Within its bor- 
ders Slavery shall not be discussed. The people do not mean by 
any affectation of liberality to endanger their social system. They 
believe it is right, but they mean to maintain it wi'ong or right. 
Upon this subject they ask no instruction and they permit none. 
They have taken their stand. They refute all argument by silenc- 
ing it, and to all force they are piepared for resistance. 

In this condition of things all hope of exterminating Slavery is 
desperate by any dther means than open determined professed 
hostility; by an active, vigorous and destructive civil war. 



CHAPTER V. 



The difficulty already stated might appal ordinary minds, bnt 
there is nothing too arduous for the efforts of fanaticism ; nothing 
too quixotic for the knight erranty of religious reformers. 

Let us then look at the case in another point of view. The 
master of slaves, it is admitted, are not at present in a temper of 



29 

mind to give them liberty and the slaves themselves are not in s. 
condition to receive it. What are the means of abolition. 

"I only ask" — says Dr. C. — "that the slave holding States should 
resolve conscientiously and in good faith to remove this greatest 
of moral evils and wrongs, and would bring immediately to the 
work all their intelligence, virtue and power." 

The extreme simplicity of this modest request shews the value 
of the proposal for all practical purposes. It is only that the wh«le 
population of the slave district should change its habits, manners, 
feelings, tastes, inclinations, principles, objects, wants and wishes. 
It is only that while they think themselves in perfect health they 
should believe this physician of souls that they are gangrened at 
the heart. It only that • for the purpose of curing a disease of 
which they are not sensible, they should submit not merely a 
spouting artery to be tied up by this skilful surgeon, but as if there 
were any hope of life in the experiment, make bare the whole 
vascular system to be dissected from the quivering trunk. 

This little operation seems not even to our author to be quite 
definite enough in its plan, and the matter is therefore pursued 
further into detail. 

"The Church should rest not, day or night, till tliis stain be wiped away." 

Mathias professed to be a prophet. The elect Lady claimed to 
work miracles. The Mormonites have some pretence to super- 
natural power, but none of them ever ventured on a greater extra- 
vagance than this. In a contest with Slavery the Church itself 
would be destroyed, so far at least aS its influence in other respects 
would be concerned. But the Church is first to be persuaded. 
The Church at the South is composed of slave-holders. Its priests 
and its levites are slave-holders. Its temples are erected, its altars 
are maintained, its offerings are purchased with the labor of slaves. 

But says Dr. C. " Government should devote itself to this, as its 
great object. Legislatures should meet to free the slave." 

This is, indeed, somewhat alarming. 

Force, power, authority are to interfere, and what cannot be ac- 
complished by argument, is to be made successful by the arm of 
the law. Religious reformers have, in all ages, been persecutors, v^ 
They have depended on reason and logic when they have had no 



so 

better rrei^is of persuasion; and resorted to penalties, fines, im- 
prisonment, the scaffold and the stake, whenever the power to do 
so has come into their hands. Mahometan and Christian are in 
this alike. All sects of Christianity have stained their fair fame by 
similar iniquity ; and while we supposed that a better system and 
a purer faith now prevailed in the world, and that the fires of 
Smithfield had been extinguished forever, the head of the liberal 
clewgy, in the advance of the nineteenth century, proposes to 
change the whole domestic arrangements of the greater part of a 
continent, and to demolish what many millions of people deem to 
be their right of property, by the power of government and the 
aid of legislatures ! ! The moral reformer, w^ho suggests this 
mode of attaining his object, abandons his own cause. 

But government and legislatures, in our day, are not what 
they once were. Government and Legislatures are but another 
name for the people. Slave-holders, in the slave country, make 
them; and they who are thus created, are slave-holders themselves. 
To call on government to put down Slavery, shews rather a dispo- 
sition to use power than a knowledge of its chai^acter. It is more 
absurd than to call on the Pope and his Cardinals to abolish su- 
perstition ; and of about as much value as the vote which enrolled 
the Emperor Alexander among the members of the Peace Society 
of Massachusetts. 

There is yet another day-dream of the learned Doctor, which 
would amuse us by its extreme childishness, if the honest simpli- 
city in which it is made, did not reedem it from ridicule. 

"Were the colored population [ofthe slave States] to be assembled in Sunday 
schools, and were the whites to beconia their teachers, a new a;id in'.-,-ie-iln3 re- 
lation wo ild bs form 3 J bstvvaju tha rac3s, and an iniluance b{i exei-ted which 
would do much to ensure tlie gift of freedom." 

There is certainly no gainsaying this proposition. The overseer 
might teach them their catechism. The field-driver, somewhat ac- 
customed to the task of instruction, might give them lessons in the 
alphabet; and the masters, when they were further advanced, might 
impress upon their minds Dr. Channing's homilies on the theory of 
property, and prove that all claim to it in a human being is alto- 
gether false and groundless. 



31 

"Were this to be done ! Oh time most reasonably to be ex- 
pected, under the joint operation of "preaching," "government," 
and "legislatures." 

I came very near having a present to-day, said a boy to his mo- 
ther. How so, my dear] Why, I asked a man to give me his 
dog, and he said no ; if he had only said yes, 1 should have brought 
him home. 

But there are solemn considerations connected with this sub- 
ject. The present inability of the slave population to receive 
freedom is admitted in the book before us; and the impossibility 
that the life of the slave should be long enough for him to ac 
quire the necessary knowledge, is a proposition quite as demon 
strable. That a few negroes may be made free without essential 
evil, is no exception to this truth. The question to be met and 
settled is, what would be the result of an entire change in the 
whole relations of society; and anxiously as I could wish it were 
otherwise, deeply and sincerely as I deplore the awful and tre- 
mendous evil with which the country is visited, strongly, as a free- 
man and a Christian, I would implore that the liberty and the 
light of the one and the other might be safely shed upon the heart 
of every bondsman in the Union, I do yet as solemnly and sin- 
cerely believe that abolition, and even the prospect of it, would 
bring desolation upon the white man and death to the slave. 

With all these modes and appliances to boot, it hardly seems 
that our author contemplates a substantial freedom to the slaves. 
He puts them like a boy on his coasting-sled, but seems to dread 
the velocity of their motion, and to try vainly to stop them in their 
way. 

It is rather a transfer of masters than a freedom from all own 
ership, that is proposed. It is not, after all, that the slave is not 
to be considered as property, but that he is not to be the proper- 
ty of the present claimants. Thus it is said : 

"It may be asked whether, in calling the slave-holding States to abolish proper- 
ty in the slave, I intend that he should be immediately set free from all his present 
restraints. By no means. Notiiing is further from my thoughts. The slave 
camiot rightfully and should not be owned by the individual. But, like every oth- 
e'/cit\zen,/i(.hdo7igstothecommu7iitjj; he is subject to the community, and the 
community has a right, and is bound to continue all such restraints as its own 
tsafety, as the well-being of the slave demand. It would be cruelty, not kiuduess, 



32 

to the latter, to give him a freedom which he is unprepared to understand or en- 
joy." 

I confess I do not understand this nice distinction. I am sure 
the slave would not comprehend it. Whether he is under one 
man or all men, he is a slave still. How he can cease to be pro- 
perty and yet belong to and be the property of the State, I do not 
perceive. Between Slavery and freedom there is no middle 
ground. To change masters merely is a mockery, which the most 
degraded and ignorant would feel to be an insult as cruel as bon- 
dage. If the negro is not a citizen, he is a slave still, call him by 
what name you please. If he is a citizen and debarred the rights 
of a citizen, the title is a deception, and the deception is a fraud. 

Slavery is an evil. The slave feels it to be so. But in what 
does he think the evil consists 1 In its physical, not its moral de- 
privations. Of these, the majority know nothing, and no more 
feel the want of them than the brute animals with whom they la- 
bor. 

The freedom that they seek for is relaxation from toil, from 
restraint, from industry. The liberty they desire is the liberty of 
sensual indulgences — to eat, drink, dance, sing, and sleep, in 
idleness and ease. We see this in the free negroes who have 
once been slaves. It is the peculiarity of their character. They 
do indeed work, because freedom alone will not support them ; 
but they work no more than to keep soul and body together, or to 
get the means of gratifying their appetites for pleasure; and 
through the whole slave country they are careless, thoughtless, 
improvident, idle, and most generally vicious, vile, indigent and 
miserable. 

It was for no high moral objects that the insurrection in St. Do- 
mingo was excited. It is for no moral improvement that the libe- 
rated slaves of that garden of the West Indies have made it com- 
paratively a desert. It is for no high and honorable objects that 
the English slaves enjoy their emancipation. 

The keeper of the Menagerie who has taken from their native 
forests the lordly Lion and the reasoning Elephant, keeps them in 
subjection by his iron bars and chain of steel, and fearlessly with 
the whip in one hand puts the other into their mouths, or lays him- 
self between their feet. Let him give them the prospect of liber- 



33 

ty. Let him take them upon the common and tie them hy a thread 
to the great tree and see then if he can practice his gambols with 
impunity. 

I hold in as high estimation as Dr. C. the grandeur of our com- 
mon nature. I know as well as he does its aspiring and heaven- 
directed character. Slavery is not its natural condition. It can 
be kept there by nothing but oppressive, heavy immoveable phy- 
sical force. Relax the cords and they willybe broken. Loosen 
the bars and the imprisoned victim escapes. He escapes as a fe- 
rocious wild beast from the toils of the hunter. He flies as a half 
tamed savage on his enemy. He springs with all the violence of 
excited passion, with all the madness of insatiate vengeance, with 
the fury of stern, malignant, deep seated and ferocious revenge 
upon all that now are deemed his foes. 

The security of the master and the slave can exist only by su- 
periority of power. 

The change to be wrought in the heart of the slave, to make him a 
tame and safe freemen, is not less in amount and kind than is to 
be produced in the heart of the white man, to persuade him into 
the generosity of giving away his property and beggaring himself. 

The slave thinks he has been injured, long, deeply, wantonly 
injui-ed, and the very restoration of his freedom as his right is an 
acknowledgment of the fact. And is it to be believed he will not 
seek his revenge 1 

Nothing but the want of power now restrains him. Has he re- 
membrance of the stripes of his vassalage 1 Does he recollect 
that his naked*4imbs have been examined in the market of human 
flesh 1 Does he " see the scar of the lash on the back of his wife t 
Does he feel that his home has been desecrated, that the tender- 
est relations, intended by God equally for all, and intended to be 
the chief springs of happiness and virtue have been sported with 
wantonly and cruelly "?" And will not a deep and deadly revenge 
be the first, strongest and most constant sentiment of his heart 1 
The slave has been too deeply injured to be a safe citizen. 

It may be said with truth that one wrong is no excuse for ano- 
ther. But we are addressing motives to the slave-holder to libe- 
rate his slaves, and he tells you what nobody doubts, that the mo- 
ment he gives them the opportunity they will cut his throat. He 
may settle the moral account, as he can, with his conscience, but it 

5 



34 

is the extremity of folly to suppose thai with such an apprehen- 
sion he will ever malce the experiment. 

There has been no insuiTection among the slaves in which, 
however temporary their power, il has not been exerted with 
dreadful cruelty and acts horrible to humanity. To implant bet- 
ter principles is a pious but a very hopeless task. For eighteen 
hundred years the world has enjoyed the light of Christianity, 
and yet we are daily \^nesses of its feebleness to restrain the 
excesses of human passion. How many generations of slaves 
are to pass away in moral discipline before the descendants of tlie 
present are to be competent to freedom ] 



CHAPTER VJ. 



If the object is impracticable, which our author proposes, the 
book is useless. If Slavery be the law of our national existence 
it is idle to urge its abolition. But we are pressed with a strong 
moral obligation. 

We are bound it is said to use every virtuous infljaence for the 
abolition of slavery. " We are bound to encourage a manly reli- 
gious discussion of it." 

I wholly deny these propositions. I see no obligation to inter- 
fere with the domestic laws of the South in regard tj^ Slavery any 
more than with the internal affairs of any private domicil in the 
country. We have not made those laws and we cannot repeal 
them. If there are slaves there, they do not belong to us. We 
cannot give them freedom. If Slavery be a great sin it does not 
lie upon our consciences. There are other sins which it would be 
well to remove. There are sins at home quite enough to give oc- 
cupation to all our thoughts, energies and prayers. Why not first 
purify ourselves? Why not shake off that nan'ow contracted big- 
otry which deifys ourselves, and which may be seen even among 
some of the most liberal religionists] ^^ hy not endeavor to get 
rid of that priestly tendency to domination which is not confined 
to the Vatican 1 



86 

Are we to preach up a general crusade against sin 1 We may 
lind a world of labor on our hands, and much that is quite as hor- 
rible and quite as immoveable as domestic Slavery. I am at a loss 
to ascertan why this sin of other people, in which we have no 
agency, bears so heavily on our hearts, unless, like the mother of 
"Cuddle Headrig, in Old Mortality, we are ready to exclaim — 
" With this auld and brief breath will I testify against the back- 
slidings, defections, defalcations, and declinings of tlie land, against 
the grievances and the causes of wrath!" 

But it seems to me, if we are bound to talk so much, we may 
be obliged to do something. We must do what we can to give 
efficacy to our preaching. We must not ease our consciences al- 
together at the expense of other peojjle. We must profess our 
willingness to share the loss which will fall on our dear friends at 
the South, when they take our gj-atuitous advice and give liberty to 
their slaves. Are we ready to do this ] 

We must refuse, certainly, to share the gains of these mande- 
stroyers and oppressors of human rights. If they have stolen 
the labor of the African, we may not be receivers of the spoil. 
We must taste none of the sugar, eat none of the rice, wear none 
of the cotton, purchase at no price any other article which is the 
product of slave labor. When the Reverend teacher has acted on 
his own principles, and proves to us that in this respect he keeps 
himself unspotted from the sin of Slavery, he may have some bet- 
ter right to read us the lecture, which, as one having authority, he 
has so assumingly bestowed upon us. 

I hold this duty of abstinence to be the imperative duty of the 
moral abolitionist. He who sees the tears of the slave on his cot- 
ton, or finds his blood in sugar, should as religiously abstain from 
the one and the other as a Jew from pork or a Mussulman from 
Wine. 

If this little personal sacrifice is somewhat startling, if we are 
not quite ready to stop the mills at Lowell at the command of this 
fanciful morality, or close half the commerce of the world in devo- 
tion to our new faith, it behooves us to look a little to the proba- 
bility of its enforcement, if we press very hard "this religious dis- 
cussion." 

It is imprtssible that the slaves can be easy under the agitation 
of the question. They know it, feel it, and will act upon it. A 



36 

cnntiniiarice of this discussion will cause insurrection, whether 
such object be intended or not. 

I will not enumerate the reasons for this assertion. They have 
been elsewhere presented, and are obvious enough. 

The press and the pen shed their influence everywhere. Fa- 
natics are hardy enough to go into the slave country ; and their 
very deaths by a mob convey knowledge to the slave. 

The discussion of Slavery, in the manner and with the princi- 
ples of our author, will, I venture to affirm, set those materials on 
fire, which in their own nature are almost inflammable enough to 
blaze by spontaneous combustion. 

Now look at the consequences here, as well as in she slave coun- 
try. Would the cause of morality be promoted by the crimes of 
insurrection and a servile war] 

Are the sufferings of the slaves, in which we are invited to feel 
so much sympathy, comparable to what would be endured by our 
own laboring poor, if, for a single year the Southern crop should 
fail for want of cultivation 1 

If the slaves must toil with wholesome and reasonable labor, or 
our own people must starve, though they double their exertions, 
which alternative does a wise and sound morality direct us to 
choose ? 

This sensibility for the negro may be well enough when it can 
be indulged without injury to our own flesh and blood; but it is the 
poor and sickly offspring of a diseased mind, when it passes over 
the deeper and nearer sufferings of our friends with comparative 
indifference. 

Such a false sympathy is, however, the constant indication of the 
book before us. 

Dr. Channing tells a tale intended to raise this pity. 

"I once passed a colored woman at work on a plantation, who was singing 
apparently with a!iiin:ition, and whose general manners would have led me to 
set her down as the happiest of the gang. I said to her. " Y-onr work seems 
pleasant to you." She replied, " No, Massa." Supposing that she referred to 
something particularly disagreeable in her immediate occupation, I said to her, 
" Tell me, then, what part of your work is most pleasant." She answered, with 
much emphasis, " No part pleasant. We forced to do it." These few words let 
me into the heart of the slave. I saw under its apparent lightness a human 
hea '' 



37 

And if the woman had been taken from her gang, and put down 
safely in State-street, and there told she was free, would she not ,, 
be equally forced to work 1 Would she not ' be sun'ounded by a 
busy and active population, moving through daily toil and labor by 
the same force 1 " Forced to do it /" How many of our own peo- 
ple are glad of the opportunity of being forced to labor. 

Possibly it may be found that the description of the abolitionists 
which our author has drawn, is the picture of his own book. He 
has "fallen into the common error of enthusiasts, that of exagge- 
rating their object, of feeling as if no evil existed but that which 
they opposed, and as if no guilt 'could be compared with that of 
countenancing and upholding it." The view which I take of the 
moral duty of an American citizen, in regard to the discussion of 
Slavery, is to leave it to the regulation of those in whose teixito- 
ries it exists. 

I feel that our Constitution was a .compromise, in which we 
agreed that each State should in its own domestic affairs be sove- 
reign and independent ; and that it is the highest violation of all 
moral principle to infringe on this obligation. I cannot reconcile 
it to my conscience, while I daily and hourly enjoy the blessings of 
this republican government, to take back any part of the price 
that was paid for it. 

In all codes of morality honesty holds the first place, and I deem 
it dishonest, as it is dishonorable, to do that by indirect means 
which I am prohibited from doing openly and avowedly before the 
world. If insurrection breaks out among the slaves — if war and 
its atrocities are the consequence — if that mass of human beings 
are induced to act out the principles of abolition, and seize by 
force the rights and liberties which they are told by a preacher of 
the gospel are their's, in spite of all law of man's device — if be- 
cause they are images of Grod, and may not be made slaves, — ar- 
guing from these principles, and feeling they are men they use 
men's weapons to repossess themselves of their birthright, no drop 
of the vast torrent of blood that is to flow shall be laid to my ac- 
count. If it be wrong to have made them slaves or to hold them 
so, if in the Court of Heaven they who imposed upon them the 
mark of degiadation are made answerable for a condition of things 
which at present no human eye sees the manner of preventing, I 
shall feel no need of an angel's tear to blot from the Chancery of 



38 

Heaven any s^are of miTie or my New-England conntrymen in the 
reckoning of the gieat (lay of account ; but I would not bean ac- 
cessory to insun-ection by aiding or abetting it, or counciling it by 
any word of iMicouragemcMit that even against my wishes might 
probably tend to produce it, for any earthly consideration. 

T say nothing of the political duty of a citizen of Massachusetts 
to abstain from conduct which is dangerous to the ])eace of our 
fellow-citizens at the South, because men whose conscience obliges 
them to carry on amoral war think nothing of political duty. But 
I concur most unhesitatingly in the opinion which has been public- 
ly advanced by distinguished jurists among us, and is a very gene- 
ral opinion among the profession of the law, that any measures ob- 
viously tending to produce insurrection are equally a violation of 
political duty as those that are intended to excite it. Men are le- 
gally answerable for the natural consequences of their actions. 
A government would be absurdly defective in jiower which could 
not prevent the infraction of its peace, and as absurdly ignorant 
not to know that other governments require it to prevent its citi- 
zen n from intei'meddling in their internal aH'airs. Neither do I 
say any thing of the cruelty t(j the negro, bond or free, which these 
publications cause under the guise of humanity. This topic has 
been also well enforced. W^e see it practically in our own colored 
population. Their character is wasting under the operation of a 
too sublimated morality. We shall make worthless vagabonds of 
hitherto hai mless and orderly citizens. 



CHAPTER VII. 



If Slavery is an evil, the generous and enterprising spirit of 
our countrymen does not incline them to sit down and tamely sub- 
mit to it. What is to be done ? I answer votuixg. It is not de- 
sirable that domestic Slavery should cease in the United States. 

On this j)oint I must borrow a favorite expression of Dr. C and 
"beg that I may not be misunderstood." 

It is not desirable that d-):n3ii:ic Slivei-y should ceise, bscause 
by til© lawa of our natui'e and occordiug to all the calculations we 



39 

can make, it could not be terminated in any way tliat would not 
produce vastly more agoravated and extensive evils than are suf- 
fered by its continuance. 

It is the fault or the folly of the abolitionist that he will not look 
on things as they are. He surveys them through the misty me- 
dium of a false and deceptive sensibility, which magnifies and 
distorts them and conceals others vastly more alarming. 

A practical statesman is bound to survey the condition of actual 
existence and all the relations of the subject he proposes to change. 
A practical moralist would not be justified in expunging one crime 
by the admission of twenty. White men as well as negroes are to 
be taken into the account, and the general happiness of all is the 
subject of discussion. 

If Slavery did not exist in the country, the question of introdu- 
cing it would be settled by acclamation. No solitary voice would 
call it into being. If, like Columbus we now stood upon the bor- 
ders of a virgin world, and had what his great genius could not 
command, power to direct by whom it should be settled, or if over 
any part of it, like one of the eminent men of New-England, we 
had been favored by Providence with the right to say who should 
occupy its borders, all would join him in the recorded mandate of 
the Ordinance for settling the Western Tenitoiy — our soil shall 
never he polluted hij Slavery. We have no such power. Slavery 
exists. There are more than two millions of slaves among us. 
What can be done % 

To keep them in Slavery is an evil, but not the unmitigated evil 
which it is represented by the overstrained sensibility of enthusi- 
asts. Heaven in its mercy never pennits such unalloyed evil to 
exist. The slaves as a class are better fed, better clad, less work- 
ed, and have less care and anxiety about their condition, than a 
great proportion of the hard working day-laborers in freedom. 
As they are deemed to be property there is no inducement to treat 
them inhumanly. If the work which they perform is to be per- 
formed by any body, it is not probable that it could be done with 
less physical suffering than it is by the slaves. Our humanity need 
not be pained on this account.* 

* It is doubtful if a child wa^ ever in the slave country compelled to eat its own 
faeces, as was proved in Pike's case at Salem ; or was subjected to the punishment 
of being tied under its amis and suspended in the vault of a necessary, as was 
proved in the case of a child often years old, is this city, eorae yoars eiuce. The 



40 



Still the ovils of Slavery are very great. What would be the 
evils of abolition. 

First the war, bloodshed and crime by which it is to be secured. 
In the present condition of things no man, who retains his com- 
mon sense, whatever his wishes may be, can for a moment believe 
that the slaves of the United States will ever become free by the 
consent of their masters. When the crisis anives it is to be ac- 
complished in blood. I will not enlarge on this topic. It is too 
painful He who can for a moment contemplate the white men 
and white women of our Southern States in the hands of their ne- 
groes ioTiorant, frantic, lustful and ferocious, and feel any satisfac- 
tion that by these means their liberty is to be secured to them, 
must have very strange notions of Christian morality. 

If however, by some supernatural operation-which is too tan- 
cifultobemade the subject of speculation-the owners would 
consent to give them up, and by a like miraole they could acquire 
themeansof understanding the value of freedom, there are yet 
other evils of vastly more amount than the present evils ot bla- 

'''suppose them to emerge from Slavery, intelligent, moral and 
industrious, with all the capacity and inclinations of the white 

"" They would be negroes still. Two distinct classes of men 
. could not live upon terms of equality in the same country and un- 
der the same government. The more their intelligence the 
g,-eater would b. the mutual hostility of the two races; and the 
final possession of power would be the result of a war of exter- 
mination, in which one or the other race would perish. 

It is supposed thev could amalgamate] God forbid ! His is 
a matter of sentimen't and taste, to be sure, upon which the feelings 
are to be umpires. There are those who see nothing disgusUng in 
such an idea. But I fearlessly aver that if this be the tendency 
and the result of our moral reformation, rather than our white 
Saxon race should degenerate into a tribe of tau.iey-colored Qua- 

case of Washburn rs. Knight, tried in our Supreme Court, wa. unequalled for a 

: L of crudties which were proved, to the absolute horror o. the ju... A ,u n 

^ lo would not hanu a horse because he is his property, wd. --""-f '^^ - 

' Torturing a teilow-beiug, in whose existence he has no pecuu.ary .n.ere.t. There 

are tyrants every where. 



41 

(Jroons, lather than that our fair and beauteous females should 
give birth to the thick-lipped, woolly-headed children of African 
fathers ; rather than the nice and delicate character of the Ameri- 
can woman, which in its freshnes and its pride is at once the cause 
and the consequence of civilization, should be debased and de- 
graded by such indiscriminate and beastly connexion ; rather than 
the negro should be seated in the halls of Congress and his sooty 
complexion glare upon us from the bench of justice ; rather than 
he should mingle with us in the familiar intercourse of domestic 
life and taint the atmosphere of our homes and firesides, — I will 
brave my share op all the responsibility of keeping him i.n 
Slaveuy. 



CHAPTER Vin, 



Dr. Channing reproves the abolitionists, and reprobates mobs. 
In these respects his book conforms to public sentiment. The 
conduct of the abolitionists is bad, and that of mobs worse ; but 
how one or the other can be appropriate subject of his animadver- 
sion is not easily perceived. 

A man who adopts this doctrine may be expected to act upon it. 
A very little infusion of zeal would make such an one a fanatic. 
If he preserved his reason to enable him to act consistently, and 
believed his immortal welfare depended on reforming other people s 
sins, he could hardly be blamed for any extravagance of action- 
The abolitionist, if he is sincere, must be extravagant. The blame 
rests oa those who inculcate the principle, rather than on the dis- 
ciple who receives it. 

Hence it is that, in the book, the reproof is very moderate, and 
mingled with much praise. Indeed it is received in kindness by 
its objects. Their leading Journal, certainly edited with much 
talent and ability, has proclaimed Dr. Channing to be the prince 
of abolitionists. 

in respect to mobs, they are well represented as the usurpers of 
the people's rights, and the impersonation of despotism. It would 
6 



42 

be well if the sentiment expressed recently in the face of one of 
them by a worthy Al(Jerman of our City, could be adopted by our 
whole comm.unity : Over my dead body, said he, — shall they, only, 
be able to triumph over the laws. 

Still to a practical moralist the question returns, whether he 
who does that which will excite a mob, is not in some degree guil- 
ty of its excesses. 

Suppose he only exercises his abstract right. If he knows be- 
fore hand the probable consequences of his action, how much of 
the blame attaches to himself? Because he may strike a spark 
with his own flint and steel, shall he be pennitted to do so over a 
cask of gunpowder? 

It is said if he does right and the mob wrong, the blame is 
theirs and not his. I agree that they are blameable and punisha- 
ble, but is he also, under these circumstances, free from censure 1 
If we take human nature as we find it, we are sure that men, 
physically free, will resent what they deem insult and injustice; 
and, when they know the law will not redress the supposed wrong, 
that they will take the remedy into their own hands. 

He, therefore, who advertises an abolition meeting, if he has 
reasonable gi-ound to believe it will produce a disturbance of the 
public peace, has an account to settle with his conscience, should 
such disturbance follow. 

If meat — says the apostle — maketh my brother to offend, I will 
eat no meat while the world lasteth. 

Upon principles of established law I have some doubt in regard 
to the legality of meetings which are known beforehand to be the 
cause of a mob. A man was recently subjected to punishment by 
common law (which is our law) for exhibiting ludicrous pictures 
in his shop window, whereby a crowd was collected that obstruct- 
ed the streets. There was nothing improper in the pictures, and 
they were placed in the man's own shop. But day after day peo- 
ple collected around thcni, and all business in the neighborhood 
was prevented. Ofood sense, says, the Court, requires that he 
shall not so use his own right, that by the common operation of hu- 
man motives the peace of the community will necessarily be dis- 
turbed.* 

* C;irli.-ile's rase, triod in tlio King's Dcuch, 1st December, 1834. Gth vol. Car- 
rii):it<>n snH Pa\-ne (xW. 



43 

It ha? long been law that a mountebank who collects a crowd n 
the streets in front of his place of exhibition, to the disturbance 
of the neighborh£)od, is a nuisance ; and what is an abolition meet- 
ing but a new kind of Harlequinade, in which people are invited 
to see how the ocean might be bailed dry with a clam-shell 1 

These mobs will cease when such spectacles cease. All good 
citizens will discountenance them under all circumstances and at 
all times. But if the tide of popular feeling bursts its bamers 
• and sweeps over the laws, the blame attaches to those whose moon- 
sick fancies raise these unmanageable floods. 

Reformers often despise all considerations which interpose be- 
tween them and their objects. They are carried away b\ ai en- 
thusiasm, which disregards the elements; and though sometimes 
on gi-eat occasions their zeal may be the cause of success, it more 
generally makes shipwreck of their enterpi'ise. It would be bet- 
ter to let discretion be their tutor. Prudence, if it be a homely 
virtue, is always a safe one. 

Nullum numen abest 
Si sit Prudeuiia tecum. 

I have no doubt Dr. Channing thinks his book will do the State 
some service. In exposing its errors I think the same. 

The freedom with which I have done this is not inconsistent 
with a high respect for his talents and his character. It is de- 
manded by a higher regard to the tranquillity of the country, the 
preservation of the Union and the cause of Teutii. 



POSTSCRIPT, 



We regret that the author of this pamphlet did not add to it the 
following estimate of Di. Channing's character as a writer. 
It is taken from the Edinburgh Review of our Doctor's "wri- 
tings and character," and will satisfy every reader that nothing 
from the cen of such a man ought to surprise us. 

' We wish that Dr. CHANNiNohad formed himself upon the man- 
«y and independent model of Jonathan Edwards, (his celebrated 
counl-i-nnan) instead of g *ing thi'ough the circle of reigning tojncs, 
to strike an alTected balance between ancient pi-ejudice and mod- 
em paradox, to tnm u> k\\ oinuion., and umre all suti'rage.s to 
calculate the vulgar clamour and the venal sophistry of the press, 
for the meridian of Boston, Dr. Channing is a great tactician in 
reasoning; and reason has nothing to do with tactics. We do not 
like to see a writer constantly trying to steal a march upon opinion, 
without having his retreat cut off — full of pretension and void of 
offence. It is a.s bad as the opposite extreme of outraging deco- 
rum at every step ; and it is only a more covert mode of attracting 
attention and gaining surreptitious applause. We never saw any 
thing more guarded in this respect than Dr. Channing's Tracts 
and Sermons — more completely suspended between Heaven and 
Earth. He keeps an eye on both worlds ; kisses hands to the rea- 
ding public all around ; and does his best to stand well with differ- 
ent sects and parties. He is always in advance of the line, in an 
amiable and imposing attitude ; but never far from succour. He 
is an unitarian ; but then he disclaims all connexion with Dr. 
Priestly, as a materialist. He denounces Calvinism and the Church 
of England ; but to show that this proceeds from no want of libe- 
rality, makes the amende; to Popery and Popish divines. He is 
an Ami'iicaTi Republican and a French Bourboniste — abuses Bona- 



45 

parte, but observes a profound silence with respect to Ferdinand — 
likes wit, provided it is serious — is zealous for the propagation of 
the gospel and the honour of religion ; but thinks it should form a 
coalition with reason, and be surrounded with a halo of modern 
lights. We cannot combine such a system of checks and saving 
abuses. We are dissatisfied with the want not only of originality, 
but of moral courage. Dr. Channixg's Essays on Milton and 
Bonaparte are both done upon the same false principle, of making 
out a ca,3e, Jor or against. The one is full of common-place eulo- 
gy; the other, of common-place invective. He cairies the pro- 
fessional license of the pulpit into other things ; and still fancies 
that he speaks '* with authority, and not as the scribes." He is 
prolix, without suspecting it ; lays a stress on the merest trifles ; 
repeats truisms, and apologizes for them as startling discoveries; 
plays the sophist, and conceives he is performing a sacred duty, 
&c. His notice of Milton is elaborate, but neither new nor dis- 
criminating. The bulk of his account of Milton, both as a poet 
and a prose writer, is, we are constrained to say, mere imitation or 
am2>liJication of what has been said hy others. We do not set much 
store by our author's criticisms, because they sometimes seem to 
be, in a great measure, borrowed from our own lucubrations.^^— 
Edinburgh Review, 1 829. 

So much for Dr. Channing. Every syllable of this applies to 
this hackneyed Treatise on Slavery. 



54 W 



/ ^ ^y\ 



> ' • • • ' 










-^^-S^' 
»^^^\,. 


















-e^^o^ 



y 










^^^ <ct^^ 






feX .<«'.% .^*.-€0i'\ >°1^'> 






^^ .^ 




















**. °. 



0° .'i)^. °o 



♦* --^^^ '-J 



f^ 


















0° /^ 









►:v./\--^ 



■t^-o^ 









V ! 






4^ 



'-^.^.^^ 'fm^ 












,1 






-vPC,- 










&'> .<.^%.\ /.'i^^.^-'o /.i^."^^ 










.*^"*. V 



. V'"^'>' %'-?^'y V'^-*'<v* %■• 



^^ - ■ 



,0 -^ -^-^iJ^f/ ^l^^ 



V*^^^*-o'' 



JP'i.. V 




.•* .0 






.^^X - 



>^ • 









* V' 

AV 



■f^' 










:v/\ 



♦•i^' o< 






y J^' 



•0. ^*WKi^^* 






i5°,«v 



;*^^^ • 

•^^r 






















